He hit print and pulled the grainy but distinctive image from the printer. The man was painfully thin, dressed in a white oxford, his face gaunt, his eyes hidden behind sunglasses.

Nick looked hard at the printed image and back up to its original on the monitor, but couldn’t see inside the collar of the man’s shirt. Nick dug in his pocket and pulled out the St. Christopher medal, checking its length, realizing that it would hang below the man’s shirt to at least the second button.

Nick clicked play and watched the video for a few more seconds before the image turned to white snow. He fast-forwarded through twenty more minutes of the white static before the file ended.

He went on to the third file, finding images of bedrooms and living rooms, fast-forwarding, finding no movement throughout the twenty-minute snippet. On the fourth and fifth files he saw images he recognized, images of the safe, the storage facility, views of hallways and conference rooms. The images cycled from the unbroken display case where a host of elegant swords, knives, and guns had rested before they were snatched away, to Hennicot’s office, to the imposing steel safes where both doors were closed and secured. Then, starting at 11:15 on the time print, the images from both files turned to white snow.

Nick clicked on the sixth and final file, but instantly hit a roadblock. A window popped up stating File Not Recognized. He checked it again, reloading it from the Palm Pilot as Marcus came back into the room.

“It looks encrypted,” Marcus said, looking over Nick’s shoulder. “Probably an eyes-only file.”

Nick pulled out and looked at the pocket watch. Only ten minutes left in the hour. He hadn’t gleaned as much information from the files as he thought he would.

“What did you find?” Marcus asked.

“Not much.” Nick handed the printed image of the man to Marcus. “It looks like the robbery started at 11:15 on the button.”

“Okay,” Marcus said as he studied the picture. “You’ve got a face. That’s a pretty good start.”

“If I had a month, yeah. I’ve only got a few more hours.”

“You may have gotten a face but I got a bit more,” Marcus said, reading from the fax printout in his hand. “Your Chevy is a rental.”

“Shit.” Nick shook his head.

“Relax,” Marcus read through the fax as he handed Nick a picture of a square-faced man, his blond hair brushed back. Judging by the collar of his shirt and the width of his tie, it was obviously an old image, at least twenty years old. “His name is Paul Dreyfus.”

Nick compared the two images. Nowhere near the same man.

“How the hell am I supposed to use that? He can be any schmo riding around.”

“Give me a little more credit, will you? I had everyone in my office drop what they were doing and check this guy out.” Marcus continued reading. “Pretty successful guy, lives on the Main Line in Haverford, Pennsylvania. Married, two kids, pretty boring life. Doesn’t like to do much except fly his own plane.”

“He came from Philly?” Nick said, surprised.

“Get this. My guys are so thorough,” Marcus said with pride as he looked at Nick. “He flew up in his own plane today into Westchester Airport, but when we checked, there’s no record of him departing out of any airport in Philly or Jersey.”

“Maybe you missed an airport, does it really matter where he came in from?”

“We don’t know yet, Sherlock,” Marcus said with a smile. “Hertz has a contract with his firm. They delivered the vehicle to the private jet terminal at 8:35 this morning. Right to him as he exited his plane.”

“Okay,” Nick said, urging his friend on. “If he’s going to commit a robbery then why leave an obvious paper trail by renting a car?”

“One piece at a time, okay?” Marcus said. “He works for DSG, he’s known as the security guru to the wealthy. Next to Michael St. Pierre at Secure Systems, he’s thought to be the best security system designer in the business. He’s the CEO, the owner actually, along with his brother Sam. They’re the top security company in the country. He is Dreyfus Security Group.”

“It was an inside job,” Nick said matter-of-factly.

“From what my people can find, he’s got over fifty million in various assets around the globe. He’s worth a hell of a lot. My bet is he probably made his money with sticky fingers or selling pass codes.”

“No, wouldn’t work,” Nick said. “If word gets out that even one of his security systems failed-you said he’s the chief designer and the CEO-he’d be out of business and under investigation in a heartbeat.”

“True, but the fact that he is here on the day of the robbery…?”

“On the face of it, he’s the inside guy, but there are others, and he is not the murderer.”

“When my people initially looked for Dreyfus, the name came up as being on the 8:30 out of Philly.”

“You said he got his car at 8:35. That doesn’t make sense,” Nick said.

“I know, but this is what makes things even odder. The Dreyfus on the plane was Sam Dreyfus, his brother. The flight got into Westchester at 10:10 this morning.”

“Brothers working together.”

“So one brother preps everything, picks up the other, they do the job and spend the next several hours erasing their tracks-”

“And killing Julia,” Nick somberly added.

“I’ll bet you the two thousand dollars that Mitch owes me that they were going to fly out of here tonight after killing her. But that’s not going to happen. Is it?” Marcus said with a smile. “’Cause Julia is going to be fine, she’s going to live.”

“Thanks,” Nick said.

“Don’t say thanks. It’s a fact.” Marcus nodded strongly. “You know, you’ve got the names of the Dreyfus brothers, you’ve got a picture of one of them, you’ve got a picture of one of the thieves who broke into Hennicot’s place. If I were you, I’d go to the police with it. Tell them about the robbery, tell them you’re sure they’re after Julia, let them start an investigation while you look separately.”

Nick smiled. “Do me a favor?”

“Another favor? Boy are you going to owe me.”

“Write yourself a note.”

“What, why?”

“Because I still need your help.”

“I’m not going to stop helping you. I’m not going to give up on you.”

“I know.” Nick smiled, glad to have a friend in Marcus. “But when I see you again, it will be a few hours earlier, you won’t remember any of this. And I can’t go through the hell of convincing you again.”

“This is nuts.” Marcus quickly reached into his desk and pulled out a sheet of his personal stationery.

“Be sure to write things only you would know.” Nick said. “If it’s something I know about you, or something obvious, you won’t be convinced.”

“Dear Me,” Marcus said with half a chuckle before growing serious. He wrote quickly, finishing in less than two minutes. He signed the letter, reached into his desk drawer, and pulled out a corporate seal. He slipped it over his signature, squeezing the handle and embossing the quickly written note.

“The raised seal on my signature is my personal seal,” Marcus said. “No one has it. I only use it on corporate documents and only over my signature to verify its validity in transactions. There is only one such seal in existence.”

Marcus folded the note, pulled out an envelope, and slipped it inside.

“Wait a minute,” Marcus said as he spun around to his computer. He clicked on the Internet and pulled up the Wall Street Journal home page. The main headline was all about the crash of Flight 502, and next to it was the financial information on the daily closing numbers for the DOW, the S &P 500, the Russell Index, and the ten-year Treasury, while below were the latest financial headlines. He quickly hit print, grabbed the printout and stuffed it into the envelope.

“If I’m going to tell myself about the future, I might as well give some proof that has profit potential,” Marcus said with a smile as he sealed the envelope and quickly addressed it to himself.